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blulich
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Name: Ben
Birthday: 6/17/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: Travelling, music, food
Expertise: Music
Occupation: Musician
Industry: Music
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/28/2006
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| Hi everyone, I'm going to be trying out blogger as my new blog. Check it out and tell me what you think. I've got one post up. Find it here:
http://travelingspoon.blogspot.com/
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| Back in early July, Rachel came down to Southern California to visit me. She got to see one of my concerts (4th of July), and we went to Disneyland and California Adventure, and we also went up to Los Angeles to do some sight-seeing, eat some authentic northern Chinese food, and to go see the musical Wicked.
Here's an overview of what happened:
Day 1: Rachel arrives at Orange County John Wayne Airport (a new one for her). She is about 20 minutes late, and since I am always punctual, I get to wait around for her. We have lunch at Taco Mesa in Costa Mesa (good Mexican food), and then head to my place. In the evening, we head over to Downtown Disney, pick up a ticket to Disneyland for Rachel, and have some dinner, and see a movie.
Day 2: We get up early and head to Disneyland to spend half a day. It wasn't too crowded, so we were able to hit a lot of the big rides. We get dinner, then head over to my rehearsal. Rachel reads, I rehearse.
Day 3: We head down to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine for my dress rehearsal. It's July 4th, and a pretty hot day. We made a fruit salad for a potluck picnic, and eat dinner. Rachel heads to her seat in the audience, I head to mine in the orchestra. We play our 4th of July concert, including pieces like "Clarinet Candy," "Chicken Reel," and (of course) many patriotic favorites. At the end, there are fireworks. Afterwards, we battle traffic and make our way over to a colleague's place to play some late-night Guitar Hero.
Day 4: We head up toward Los Angeles to get lunch. But not just any lunch: Northern Chinese lunch. I had found a place on the internet that supposedly served Northern Chinese food, so Rachel and I decided to give it a shot, and Rachel would determine how authentic it was. So we headed over to Rosemead (just east of LA) and found the place, called (appropriately) "Northern Chinese Restaurant." We were the only non-Chinese people in the joint, and I'm sure everyone was wondering what we were doing in there. We pored over the menu, looking for things that looked familiar to Rachel. I found di san xien as Rachel looked for her favorite pork dish. She asked the waitress what a particular dish was like, and the waitress called over her boss (I don't think she spoke a lot of English). There was some attempt at communicating until finally Rachel asked, "is it guo bao ro?" Oh!! Guo bao ro, is down the menu a few numbers. Rachel then ordered the rest of the meal in Chinese, which worked much better than trying to order in English. I think the wait staff was impressed. So we got some dumplings, the guo bao ro (pork), and di san xien (three vegetables). It was good and authentic, and we had some leftovers. They even brought some kind of purple roll for dessert; it had sweet beans in the middle.
After lunch, we headed over to downtown LA. We walked around for a little bit (not much going on downtown), and took this picture: (Rachel at Disney Hall).
Then we headed over to Hollywood. We passed by Paramount Studios, saw the Hollywood sign, then parked near Grauman's Chinese Theater (found a free parking spot!). We saw all the handprints, then started walking along the Walk of Fame, seeing all the stars on the sidewalks. Very touristy, but pretty cool too. (I would be posting more photos, but the photo-uploader is not working real well today...sorry!) We headed over to the Pantages Theater next to go see Wicked. Rachel really wanted to see it, so she got us tickets. It was a good show, even though we were in the last row of the nose-bleeds. After Wicked, we headed home to get some sleep, because...
Day 5: Disneyland!!! California Adventure!!! Fun Fun Fun!!! We spent about the whole day at the parks, exhausting ourselves. We rode all sorts of rides, including: Hollywood Tower of Terror, California Screamin', Maliboomer, Mulholland Madness, the Ferris Wheel, Soarin' over California, Grizzly River Rapids, Toy Story Mania, Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones, Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Tours, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, It's Tough Being a Bug, and probably some other rides too. Then we watched the "Dreams Come True" fireworks show (complete with flying Tinker Bell) and Fantasmic. Whew! What a day.
Day 6: See Day 5. Plus, we headed down to Laguna Beach for dinner and some time walking and exploring the beach.
Day 7: Rachel had to leave, leaving me to recover from a whirlwind week!
(Sorry again about the lack of pictures)
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| I believe this originally was just sound, and then somebody added all the video to it. It's pretty funny; enjoy:
(I especially love the dog about 35 seconds in, and the Berg Violin Concerto)
Funny Schoenberg commercial
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Yahoo story
USGS CA earthquake site
Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada
That would be the big red one. [EDIT: now it's the big yellow one]
Only about 20 miles from me; much bigger earthquake than the first one I felt here last fall.
Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada
== PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==
California Integrated Seismic Net
USGS/
Caltech/
CGS/
UCB/
UCSD/
UNR
Version #E: This report supersedes any earlier reports of this event.
This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.
A moderate earthquake occurred at 11:42:15 AM (PDT) on Tuesday, July 29, 2008.
The magnitude 5.8 event occurred 3 km (2 miles) SW of Chino Hills, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 12 km ( 8 miles).
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Magnitude
| 5.8 - local magnitude (ML)
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Time
| Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 11:42:15 AM (PDT)
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 18:42:15 (UTC)
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Distance from
| Chino Hills, CA - 3 km (2 miles) SW (235 degrees)
Diamond Bar, CA - 8 km (5 miles) SE (127 degrees)
Yorba Linda, CA - 9 km (5 miles) NNE (23 degrees)
Pomona, CA - 11 km (7 miles) S (178 degrees)
Los Angeles Civic Center, CA - 47 km (29 miles) ESE (103 degrees)
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Coordinates
| 33 deg. 57.5 min. N (33.959N), 117 deg. 45.1 min. W (117.752W)
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Depth
| 12.3 km (7.6 miles)
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Location Quality
| Good
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Location Quality Parameters
| Nst=144, Nph=144, Dmin=8 km, Rmss=0.42 sec, Erho=0.3 km, Erzz=1.3 km, Gp=18 degrees
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Event ID#
| ci14383980
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Additional Information |
2-degree map
Google Earth KML (Requires Google Earth.)
ShakeMap shaking intensity maps
Waveforms
Did you feel it?
24-hour Aftershock Forecast Map
SCSN Moment Tensor Solution
CALTECH/USGS AFTERSHOCK PROBABILITY REPORT
Tsunami Information Statement from the WC/ATWC
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For more information, see http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/sca/
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THE AFTERMATH
crooked pictures
cds fell over
There were stacks of music that fell over, and a couple pictures, and a coffee mug, and some canned food, and a bottle of wine fell over. Cell phones were out of service for about 45 minutes too. Initial estimates were that it caused about $10 billion of damage to my apartment alone. Donations to help with the clean-up efforts are greatly appreciated.
:)
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